ALL-IRELAND MINOR CHAMPIONSHIP SEMI-FINAL

Tyrone v Cork

Saturday, Tullamore, 2.30pm

By Niall Gartland

REPRESENTING Tyrone minors is the fulfillment of a life-long dream, so you can only imagine what reaching an All-Ireland semi-final means to Donaghmore midfielder Ronan Donnelly.

The Red Hands will take on Cork this Saturday for a place in the All-Ireland final against either Meath or Sligo, and they’ll be quietly confident of going further in the competition after playing some spell-binding football during their successful Ulster Championship campaign.

Assistant manager Gary Hetherington is actually Ronan’s Godfather, but it’s obviously from his impressive displays to date that he has nailed down a starting berth on merit alone.

Donnelly has formed a formidable midfield partnership with Coalisland’s Ruairi McHugh – when McHugh goes forward, Donnelly sits back – and the pairing got the better of their direct opponents last Friday evening Tyrone claimed the Ulster title with a 2-11 to 1-7 victory over Donegal.

While the players did the business on the pitch, it’s no coincidence that they have a fantastic management set-up as well.

Gerard Donnelly, Gary Hetherington, Conor Gormley, Ciaran Gourley, Tommy Canavan and all the rest of them deserve to bask in this success, something Donnelly would readily agree with.

“Gary’s actually my Godfather so we have a great relationship. He always keeps me motivated but also ensures I’m putting in the effort as well. What can you say about Gerard – he’s unbelievable, his knowledge of the game is fantastic. The entire backroom team are also mighty, they’re always helping us out and they’re great to have around generally,” he said.

“I’ve always wanted to play for Tyrone, and my uncles set out the goal for me that I’d play for the Tyrone minors, so thankfully I’ve fulfilled that.”

Donnelly is one of seven Donaghmore lads on the Tyrone minor panel, which isn’t that surprising when you consider how successful the club is at underage level at present. They have a keen rivalry with Ardboe, home of Tyrone minor captain Cormac Devlin, but Donnelly says they set aside club rivalries when playing for their county.

“You’d think us and the Ardboe boys would be wary of each other but we get on really well. We’re all pulling in the one direction so I’d say we’re really good teammates.

“In general there’s a really good team spirit in the squad. We all have the same goals and everyone’s equally important. You saw how important the subs were when they came in.”

Donnelly also expanded on his midfield partnership Ruairi McHugh. The Coalisland youngster is a physical beast and regularly attacks the opposition defence.

Donnelly knows when it’s time to sit back, but he also got up the pitch for a fine score at Brewster Park on Friday night.

“Ruairi’s unreal. He catches a serious amount of kick-outs and his physicality is obviously top notch. We generally know ourselves what do to in certain situations – I usually let him go on but today I finally kicked a score myself! But usually I defend when he goes forward and that’s the way we work it.”

When McHugh was black-carded in the second-half, Tyrone stood up to the challenge with two quickfire goals that proved the winning of the contest.

“We knew when Ruairi got the black card we’d have to sit back and ride the storm.

“I’m not sure how but somehow we got the two goals with a man down and we just kicked on from there.”

Setting aside some poor wides, Tyrone regularly found gaps in Donegal’s mass defence.

“We knew we got it fairly easy in the Fermanagh game. We reviewed Donegal and knew it was going to be tough, that they were going to back their defence.

“We prepared for it and it worked out well in the end. We got the two goals and that really settled us down.”

Tyrone will now play Munster champions Cork at Tullamore on Saturday. The Rebels are strong at youth level, but Tyrone will be quietly confident that the road doesn’t end here.

Donnelly added: “We’re really looking forward to it, obviously it’s going to be a really hard game and we’re going to have to do our homework on them.

“We wouldn’t be scared of any team. Cork will be a tough battle, but we knew Donegal would be tough as well.

“We just have to go again.”